Historic Golf Clubs
in England

While Scotland may have invented golf, England embraced it with extraordinary enthusiasm. By the late 19th century, golf had spread rapidly across the English counties — first among the aristocracy, then among the growing middle class. The result was an explosion of club formation between 1880 and 1914 that gave England one of the densest concentrations of historic clubs anywhere in the world.

The courses that emerged from that era are some of the finest ever designed. The heathland belt of Surrey and Berkshire — Sunningdale, Wentworth, Walton Heath — set a new standard for inland golf. To the north, the Lancashire and Yorkshire links offered a different kind of challenge, raw and exposed to the elements. In between, hundreds of parkland and downland courses quietly established themselves as the backbone of English club golf.

England has 863 golf clubs in The Centenary database that are 100 years or older. Among them are 21 clubs that hold a Royal designation. The sheer breadth of this list — spanning every county and every style of course — reflects just how deeply golf is woven into the English sporting fabric.

Below you will find the complete list, ordered by founding year. We also show which clubs currently qualify for The Centenary network based on our Provenance Index — our transparent measure of a club's international and regional standing.